The Top 40 Songs of 2014
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF7P2PlWdeA
Vince Staples – “Hands Up”
RATKING – “Snow Beach”
Politically angry hip-hop felt extra relevant in 2014, with good reason. The title phrase of young California rapper Vince Staples best song had a wider, sadder significance than any single place or incident. You know it’s been a bad year in police misconduct if the LAPD doesn’t crack the top two in the most-fucked departments list. Though their debut album So it Goes also touches on police hassling, its lopsided highlight “Snow Beach” finds NYC’s RATKING with another good reason to be pissed off. The carnivorous sprawl of NYU’s Manhattan campus and the neighborhoods it blithely fucks up is a very geographically specific concern, but the song should be thrilling even for out-of-towners as an example of these very young rappers’ fearless experimentation. False starts, wandering sax solos, repeated phrases sung and shouted—their short attention spans keep things moving, keep the song from resembling much of anything else.